Anne Ewers, President & CEO of the Kimmel Center for the Performing Art, said in a statement:

Philadelphia is a revered jazz city and this presentation gives us a one-of-a-kind opportunity to celebrate the music of four jazz icons in their centennial year. Touting artists from around the world, Jazz 100 will showcase the unifying fibers of this genre.

Over the course of their careers, the jazz legends performed in clubs and venues in Philadelphia.

Dizzy’s Philly roots are deep. Born in South Carolina, his family was part of the Great Migration. For a time, he lived at 637 Pine Street. He was a member of the house band at the Earle Theater. After a tiff with management, Dizzy became a regular at the Downbeat Club, which was located within shouting distance of the Earle Theater.

An iconic television commercial is one of my earliest memories of “The First Lady of Song.”

One of my most memorable experiences was attending Thelonious Monk’s funeral in 1982 at Saint Peter’s Church in New York City. Musicians paid loving tribute to Monk with version-after-version of “Round Midnight.”

In an AlterNet piece, Steven Rosenfeld outlined “10 Reasons Why the NAACP Is Absolutely Right About a National Moratorium on Charter Schools.” I had planned to write a point-by-point rebuttal, but Rosenfeld’s diatribe is more opinion than fact. I remembered the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan often said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

Rosenfeld is entitled to his opinion so I’ll share a few facts. In Philadelphia, one-third of students attend charter schools. There are 83 charter schools, two of which — MaST Community Charter School and String Theory Charter School — have a combined waiting list of more than 10,000 students.

WHEN SCHOOLS get it right, whether they’re traditional public schools or public charter schools, let’s figure out what’s working and share it with schools across America.” Hillary Clinton was booed at the National Education Association’s summer convention for that self-evidently sensible proposition. The reaction speaks volumes about labor’s uniformed and self-interested opposition to charter schools and contempt for what’s best for children. Now the union has been joined by a couple of organizations that purport to be champions of opportunity.

In separate conventions over recent weeks, the NAACP, the nation’s oldest black civil rights organization, and the Movement for Black Lives, a network of Black Lives Matter organizers, passed resolutions criticizing charter schools and calling for a moratorium on their growth. Charters were faulted by the groups for supposedly draining money from traditional public schools and allegedly fueling segregation. The NAACP measure, which still must be ratified by the board before becoming official, went so far as to liken the expansion of charters to “predatory lending practices” that put low-income communities at risk.

No doubt that will come as a surprise to the millions of parents who have seen their children well-served by charters and to the additional million more who are on charter school waiting lists for their sons and daughters. “You’ve got thousands and thousands of poor black parents whose children are so much better off because these schools exist,” Howard Fuller of the Black Alliance for Educational Options told the New York Times.

This information likely comes as a surprise to Rosenfeld. But his mind is made up; don’t confuse him with the facts. Indeed, he dismissed the editorial saying “it is deeply wrong to belittle the issues that affected communities raise—which is the basis for the NAACP’s draft resolution.”

The basis for African American parents’ support of charter schools is the fierce urgency of now. As income has become a proxy for race, they reject the notion that their zip code is destiny. Black parents don’t want their children trapped in failing traditional public schools because they live in the “affected communities.”

Access to charter schools empowers low-income and working-class parents to exercise their right to choose the best educational environment for their children. Fact is, black students make up 27 percent of charter school enrollment nationwide.

The bottom line for Rosenfeld is, well, the bottom line. In his worldview, charter schools “divert” money from traditional public schools. By contrast, supporters believe the money should follow the student. For them the bottom line is: Are students learning the three Rs – reading, writing and arithmetic?

Like this:

On the first day of summer, I had to report for jury duty at the Juanita Kidd Stout Center for Criminal Justice. As I stood in line to go inside the Jury Assembly Room, I noticed a panoramic mural. I made a mental note to check it out during the break.

As the director of All That Philly Jazz, words cannot convey my shock and awe to discover some of the images depict Philadelphia’s legendary jazz clubs, including the Showboat and Pep’s.

It is clear the details only could have come from folks who were there. So it was no surprise to learn the mural was conceived by Doug Cooper in collaboration with “Philadelphia elderly.” Cooper wrote:

I brought together more than 40 elderly residents to complete it, and I worked jointly with them at the Center in the Park in the Germantown district of Philadelphia. Local artist, Deborah Zwetsch and I assembled their memories over the previous 80 years.

[…]

The memories of the elderly are highly personal. Some are sentimental, some painful, some humorous, some ordinary.

There is nothing ordinary about the depiction of the Ridge Avenue jazz corridor.

Ridge Avenue is ground zero in the Philadelphia Housing Authority’s plan to transform the Sharswood neighborhood. There is widespread concern that PHA has no plan to preserve the neighborhood’s cultural heritage and historic resources.

Cooper’s mural, showcasing Pep’s, the Showboat, Blue Horizon, Uptown Theater and jazz joints on Ridge Avenue, tells part of the story of Philadelphia’s rich jazz heritage. We must capture the rest of the story while the folks who were there are still here. If we don’t, their stories will be lost for current and future generations.

Philadelphia is changing. From the “Lost Our Lease” signs on Market Street to the “For Sale” or “For Rent” signs in gentrifying neighborhoods, the signs of change are everywhere. There is growing concern that gentrification will displace longtime residents.

Black Philadelphians have seen this movie before. African Americans were pushed out of Society Hill. South Street was once chock-a-block with black-owned jazz spots and small businesses. Black business owners were advised to leave because an expressway was going to be built. It wasn’t.

The legendary Gert’s Lounge on South Street was managed by Dorothy Smith.

On the heels of the loss of the “Tribute to John Coltrane” mural, another iconic African American mural is on the chopping block. The Philadelphia Housing Authority plans to tear down the “Women of Jazz” mural in Strawberry Mansion.

The blonde next to Nina Simone is Dorothy “Miss Dot” Smith. A longtime resident of Strawberry Mansion, Miss Dot died in January 2013. Her family and neighbors are outraged that PHA is doing nothing to preserve the legacy of these jazz divas. Their outrage is shared by the community at large.

When I brought the destruction of the murals to his attention, Michael jumped on it. I will update the community tonight at the monthly meeting of ATAC, which starts at 7:00 p.m. at Zion Baptist Church, located at Broad and Venango Streets.

Let me be clear: The fight is not over brick-and-mortar structures. The fight is over preserving our heritage and avenging the ancestors.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s remarks to the 1st Berlin Jazz Festival. In the foreword to the program, Dr. King wrote:

God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create—and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.

This is triumphant music.

Modern jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

Twenty years earlier, a jazz drummer, Joseph Rudolph Jones, triumphed over the hard reality facing black employees of the Philadelphia Transportation Company. When the PTC proposed to hire blacks as trolley car operators, the segregated Philadelphia Rapid Transit Employees Union staged a wildcat strike. As Bart Everts wrote for Hidden City Philadelphia, the illegal strike threatened the war effort:

Seventy years ago, on August 1, 1944, a faction of white transit workers with the Philadelphia Transit Company (PTC) staged a wildcat strike for a nefarious reason: they didn’t want African Americans, employed by the transit company as mechanics and laborers, to be given the same high paying jobs driving the trolleys they had.

The strike effectively shut down Philadelphia, one of the key centers of defense related manufacturing, at a crucial moment in World War II. The action halted the city’s war production, as workers were unable to get to the Navy Yard and factories throughout the city. Philadelphia was the third largest producer of war materials (about one of every six dollars spent here), and the military and federal government quickly took notice. The threat of a major disruption was so severe that the Roosevelt Administration intervened, ending the strike after a week.

When the strike ended, Jones was among the first group of African American trolley operators (Jones is on the far left).

Joe had a job driving a trolley car – the 21 line that extended from Chestnut Hill, at the very top of Philadelphia at the North End, all the way through the city down to South Philadelphia. That was the longest trolley ride in the city.

It ran on 11th Street, right past the Downbeat, which was on the second floor.

Joe often stopped the trolley in front of the club. He’d grab the controls, jump out, and sit in for a number or two. The people hung out the window of the trolley, growing more and more impatient. They wanted to get home, or wherever they were going. When Joe got back to the trolley, everybody would cheer, and off they’d go to South Philly.

Joe, better known as Philly Joe Jones, went on to become a modern jazz drumming legend.

Long before Philly Joe Jones became the drummer of choice for Miles Davis and John Coltrane, his trolley route went pass Coltrane’s apartment on 12th Street in North Philly. While the rowhouse where Coltrane lived when his family migrated from North Carolina is no longer there, the tracks are still visible.